I am compelled to start with statistics. In October, when our course began, we were 25 – of whom 23 were women. The winter, the pressures of being adults and parents in a credit crunch, the demands of the study schedule, have reduced us to 21. The student body is now made up of 20 women – and me. It is a noticeable imbalance that was also apparent when I trained with Cruse.

The bare numbers speak for themselves: far more women than men are training to be counsellors. But what this stark gender imbalance might indicate about counselling in the wider world is less obvious.

The course we are on is certainly an emotive undertaking. There have been tears – and they, even in the new millennium, are seen to spring, if not from females per se, then from the feminine side of our personalities. Ask most people and they will also still assume that the ability to engage in self-examination, to absorb other people’s emotional overspill, is also in the gift of women more than most men. As in other ‘caring’ fields – nursing, primary education – I might have predicted a feminine bias to the class, but not to such an extent. Perhaps we still carry assumptions about gender roles that speak to us from deep within. Perhaps there is more to the choices we make than an honest examination of our skill set.

Almost inevitably, given the statistics, I have met women on various counselling courses who seem psychologically ill-equipped for it, whose personality is singularly unsuited to empathic listening, yet they have managed to ignore these drawbacks and cast themselves in this caring role. Are they still compelled by a cultural message that it is women who pick up society’s emotional tab? 

However, even if it is true that there are one or two unsuitable women taking to the field, it would be hard for me, in my new found position as token bloke, to shrug off what looks like a clear message – you are in the wrong place mate! How come I am the only male who thinks he is cut out for this? Where did this notion come from? 

The answer, or an answer, comes when we assemble further statistics and look at our history. A skim down the course reading list reveals a very different gender split. If they are not students of counselling, men are certainly there in force to write about it. On our integrative course, there are the core texts in each school of counselling, written by Freud, Jung, Adler (the psychoanalysts); Rogers (the person-centred); Ellis (the behaviourist) – all men. And then I heard one of our tutors define Freud as ‘the father of psychoanalysis’. I am not a sworn psychodynamic devotee, but is there something going on here?

During the theoretical segments of the course, we have been shown video footage of counsellors in action. Again, on screen, modelling the counselling situation, we have seen four practitioners – all men. The only women in evidence have been two female clients. I am aware that there are female authors, and footage does exist of female counsellors in action, but as our father says, ‘there are no accidents,’ and this is the model we have been shown. It is also the case that our course is run by three teachers/facilitators, two of whom are men. Thus, when we practise skills, two times out of three, it is a man who tells us how we are doing, who gives us the paternal nod.

Intrigued by the statistical skew of our particular course, I cranked up the search engine on the laptop (and remembered doing so, prior to making my application) to look for practising counsellors. On pages for the Midlands area, I found on one site, five in 12 counsellors in private practice were men; on another, seven in 14. Searching in London, where modernity happens sooner, I found on three sites six in 13, six in 12 and 11 in 16 practising counsellors were men. 

The message that made it OK for me to embark on this caring road is here. Just as in Casualty where it is the man, Charlie, who is in charge of the other nurses, or primary education, where men occupy a disproportionate number of principal roles, there is encouragement for men. Which suggests it may be women who train to be counsellors, but men are out there; achieving, dispensing the theory, leading the courses, actually counselling and earning a living at it. 

Some details have been changed to protect indentities.